ntoskrnl missing or corrupt

Hi,
I copied the Ntdlr and Ntdetect.com and copied/paste what you said too, all onto a floppy but when I inserted it into the problem computer (booted up computer with floppy in place), got an error message that said to remove disk or other media, press any key to restart...Something tells me I am not inserting it at the right time or could I be wrong on that ???

 

Make sure your BIOS setup has in its startup settings the floppy drive set first instead of the hard drive.

The floppy should be in place with the door closed when the computer is power on.

No matter what the error message, press any key at startup if prompted.

 

Hi,
I am suprised I did not think of that myself but anyways, I entered the BIOS (F-10 KEY), and changed it from the CD ROM to the Floppy...Put the floppy in, rebooted the computer and I keep getting the message "remove disk or media, press any key to restart "...The floppy drive light goes on intially but then goes out...Not sure what's happening...Considered doing up another floppy just incase that one was bad but opted to wait for your expertise instead...

 

For whatever reason it is not reading it.
Follow the instructions carefully and try another floppy.
If you have a fresh one pre-formatted use that.

 

Will butt in for one post.
Try the XP boot floppy in a good working XP comp and verify the floppy is working.

IF you are not, you must format the floppy on a XP comp, do not select make a dos floppy. If it is a old floppy that was formated by 98 it will not work.

 

Hi Bill and Top Farmer,
I will try and format another floppy and see if that works...I do not have an XP Floppy...I did follow your directions thoroughly Bill but for some reason "the ailing computer did not take it's new medicine" too well...Will post back late afternoon to early evening...Thank you

 

Good Morning,
While taking a short break at work I noticed in one of my computer magazines called "Smart Computing" (November 2006 issue), they have a section on when the NTLDR is missing...They refrence two most frequent causes which are (1) Upgrades and, (2) Hard drive replacements...They also mention checking the IDE cables even though it's unlikely...My question is, if Upgrades are known for this ? Then do we know what's being done to prevent this from other users going thru this agony...Why I ask that question is, I have done several Upgrades and Installs of Windows Xp (Home Editions), and never seen this happen or had prior knowledge...During many of my Google searches I have also seen another possible cause is a VIRUS ??? I am of course willing to see this problem to the end despite my desire recently to throw in the towel as long as I have the great guidance from this forum I have been blessed with on past postings...

 

I have never heard of an upgrade doing this.

I have an XP SP2 installation that began with the original release of XP when it went RTM. If have every upgrade offered by Microsoft and them some. The details of my ntoskrnl.exe file:

Thursday, August 29, 2002, 1:03:30 AM && date file was created
Version: 5.1.2600.2845

The most common reason for issues with this file is user or other damage to the boot.ini file.

The second most common reason is hard drive failure.

The third most common reason is hardware reconfiguration that changes the PnP enumeration of the hard drives.

The fourth most common reason is failure during a user in-place reinstallation upgrade of XP.

 

Hi,
I copied the files and did the copy/paste thing as well to another formatted floppy and got the same problem...I made sure the BIOS was set to bootup from the floppy drive, and the short little prompt comes up that says to remove the disks or media, press any key to restart...The owner who has some important buisness files in the computer, says he has not had any problems with his floppies or floppy drive as that is what he uses to backup his files too...

 

Hi,
I decieded to take a look inside the Tower to make sure all the cables, etc were all righty-tighty and so on...Must to my suprise, the power supply box was so covered with lint as was the CPU fan...Not an ounce of air was getting thru from what I could see...Unfortunately after cleaning it out, it did not make a difference...I booted up the computer three or four times to see what will happen with and without the floppy disk in it and there was no change...The fan and power supply appear to be working fine...

 

• Add the drive to a working computer as a slave device.
• Add to the ownership so that modifications can be done:
  http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...port/kb/articles/q308/4/21.asp&NoWebContent=1
• Open My Computer, right click on this new slave drive, Properties, Tools, Error Correctiion, and checkmark both boxes. Reboot and let the chkdks run on the slave drive.
• Let the Antivirus software of this working computer do a thorough scan of this new slave drive and fix any errors.
• Copy and paste from \Windows\System32 on the working original drive of the borrowed computer to the \Windows\System32 slave drive folder the file NTOSKRNL.EXE
• Put the drive back into its original home computer and try a boot.

But read this first. Because your situation reminds me very much of a recent test by WindowsBBS member TeMerc: http://www.temerc.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2813

In that situation where \Windows\System32 is deleted or the majority of the files infected only a completely clean reformatting of the drive and starting from ground zero is going to work.

 

Hi,
Thank you...I will post back in a few days and let you know if the mission was a success...

 

Fascinating Read - Thanks.

 

Hi,
I read it and I guess we can't rule out a virus for affecting the boot.ini files. What a shame...I just feel bad for the owner of the computer I am trying to fix because he asked for me to install Xp, to which I did and three days later "bang "...(Previously had Windows 98)...

The computer unknowingly was limping along anyways because of (1) dial up-which is knowingly slow and, (2) the CPU fan plus power supply were caked up with lint which I'm sure slowed it down more...

In reading up on the possible causes, forums and google sources of information have mentioned things from Upgrades to defragmented drives, plus viruses. The end result may be to format the hard drive but in this case there are some buisness files that we are trying to recover and formatting needs to be the last straw...

 

To recover the files you could:

. Mount as a slave drive; already discussed earlier.
. Use a Bart PE CD: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
. Use variation's of Bart, such as Ultimate Boot CD: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

 

Hi,
I think we are making progress but we are not there yet...The following has been done:

(1) Hooked up the problem hard drive as the slave to a working computer.
(2) Click on "My Computer" - saw the slave drive listed as the Local Disk (F).
(3) Right clicked on it - selected properties - clicked on tools - In the error
checking box, clicked on check now then put a check mark in both boxes.
(4) Two phases of error checking were done.
(5) Then clicked on Defragment
(6) A few minutes into it - The AVG virus protection popped up and at the
end of the scan "found 93 trojans (4 moved to vault - 85 healed).
(7) After 3/4 of the defrag was done, I stopped it.
(8) I found the ntoskrnl.exe in System32, copied it, and pasted it in the slave
drive.
(9) Shut the computer down.
(10) Removed the hard drive and placed it back in the computer (placed the
jumpers back as Master).
(11) Booted the computer up.
(12) Error message re-appeared again...just can't win.

I Will try and see if the repair option and bootcfg /rebuild will work now that
all those trojans were removed and post back...Will also attempt to see if
the reinstall of the missing or corrupt file will work and post back...

 

Howdy,
I put the Xp CD in again, access the repair option, typed in:

(1) chkdsk / r = took several min's longer this time than previous times but
completed.
(2) bootcfg /r = failed.
(3) expand c: i386\ntoskrnl.ex_ C:\Windows\System32\ntoskrnl.exe
"could not find directory,etc "

Will rehook up the hard drive as slave again and make sure the file ntoskrnl.exe that I copied and pasted earlier is there and if not try it again incase I did not paste it properly...Will post back this evening.

 

(2) bootcfg /r = failed.
The syntax is wrong for the command. Please see the earlier posts.
When you say it failed, what exactly happened, and what error message did you receive?

(3) expand c: i386\ntoskrnl.ex_ C:\Windows\System32\ntoskrnl.exe
"could not find directory,etc "

Again, the syntax is wrong.
Please see the earlier posts.

Try the repair floppy method suggested earlier as well.

 

Hi,
When I tried the bootcfg /rebuild, then typed that in when I posted it earlier, I accidently typed in bootcfg /r instead of bootcfg /rebuild...The error I am getting is the same I have been getting since day one which is in post #12 saying (in brief): Error: Failed to successfully scan disks for Windows Installation... As for the other one expand c: (blah-blah-blah), I also tried D and E and F and it could not find the file or directory same as before...I am going to try and copy the ntsokrnl.exe from the good computer and double make sure it got copied where as before I did not re-check it...I will post back in about an hour...Thanks again Bill, sooner or later I think we can get there from here ???

 

Hi,

WE FINALLY DID IT..I rehooked the problem hard drive up as the slave, copied and pasted the file from the good hard drive and made sure it was in it's proper location this time and it was...In my earlier attempt I must of moved a little too quickly and failed to make sure it was loaded...This time I checked twice and bang there it was...I thank everyone for their help and patience, espicially Bill...The buisness files that were so desperately needed were still there...AMEN...